Shreyas Ragavan: 2023-12-20-213914 Using pip install --user and it's purpose

[2023-12-20 21:39]

Why Use pip install --user is a an article talking about why the --user flag is useful while installing packages.

The main points to keep in mind are:

using the --user flag enables you to specify an installation location not requiring admin access.
Lesser chances of polluting system-wide packages.
It can plug into other pip commands like pip list.
The environment variable PIP_USER can be changed for installing to a different user directory for that particular session and machine.
Mostly useful when multple users are using the same machine.
When a virtual environment is created, there is a system-site-packages argument that can be set. If this is set, the --user flag is not valid within that virtual environment. The reason is that the same packge could exist in the user's virtual environment as well as the global site, and thus cause conflicts.
Most useful to understand in multi-user setting systems and virtual environments.